Call of Duty: Bullet Points
by metalzerofour
Summary: The lives of a Royal Marine Commando and an SAS operator are changed forever as their paths cross during what is supposed to be a routine counter-insurgency operation in Helmand Province. This story takes place in late 2011, a few months after the end of the Second Russian Civil War and the other events detailed in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Contains violence/strong language.
1. Chapter 1

It was a typical night in Afghanistan – and by Afghanistan's standards, typical meant hotter than two rats fucking inside a wool sock and drier than an Arab's bath-mat.

It was also eerily quiet. The silence was broken only by the faint crunch of booted feet on sun-baked ground as a company of Royal Marine Commandos consisting of three twelve-man teams picked their way cautiously towards their target – which, in this case, was a small village on the outskirts of Helmand Province.

Truthfully, "village" was something of a generous overstatement. It was really little more than a collection of mud huts, surrounded by a low stone wall with occasional patches of shrubbery dotted about sparsely about.  
A few weeks ago it had housed several dozen small families; then the insurgents had come. They'd rousted the villagers out of their homes in the middle of the night at gunpoint, shooting anyone who resisted - and a couple who didn't, just to make an example of them - kidnapped the eldest boys of each family and press-ganged them into working in the rather modest fields outlying the village, which had since been re-purposed to grow opium.

It was things like that, reflected one of the approaching Marines as their Afghan interpreter explained the situation, that made this job feel just that little bit more worthwhile. Knowing that they were going to kill the bastards who'd caused so much pain and misery gave her a righteous thrill of satisfaction which was strangely offset by the cocktail of fear and excitement, compounded by adrenaline that was spiking through her veins. For once, the sweat on her brow had nothing to do with the blistering heat of the Afghan sun.

Her name was Elizabeth Hankard, but everybody in her section (squad) just called her by her nickname - Dice. She was the only woman in the platoon, although given the fact that she didn't exactly cut the most feminine figure even when she wasn't carrying a rifle and lugging a couple of hundred pounds' worth of equipment you might be forgiven for not knowing this at first glance. She was short, of stocky build, and flat-chested; the last part didn't bother her even with all the piss-taking she'd got for it. Who wanted two useless bags of muscle tissue and fat bouncing around in front of their chest when they were in the middle of a combat situation?

Her hair was a fiery orange, short, and tied back in a ponytail, concealed mostly by her helmet although a few tell-tale strands protruded from the front and sides. Her face was dotted with freckles, her pale eyes nearly matching the colour of the thin green T-shirt she wore underneath her battle-dress uniform (BDU) jacket to wick the moisture away from her skin. There were more freckles on her forearms, but although her sleeves were rolled up past her shoulders it was difficult to make them out in the darkness. She wore the same body armour, and the same helmet, the same pattern camouflage as her BDUs and everyone else. To an outsider, exactly the same as any of the others.

Except for one, of course. Today, there was an anomaly amongst their ranks.

No-one knew his name.

His real name, at least.

They'd first seen him during the briefing back at Camp Bastion, which was being given by a man from military intelligence who had introduced himself as Jimmy – first name only (if that was even his real name), peculiar even for a spook. They didn't ask which outfit he was from, but ever since the briefing rumours had been flying like shrapnel in a mortar attack – she'd heard claims that he was from everything from Box to The Firm, and privately she had a few ideas about where he might even have come from herself.

Jimmy wore a pair of sand-coloured cargo trousers and civilian hiking boots, and had a pistol tucked snugly into a holster on his right thigh. The holster itself was suspended by a black leather belt rather than a military webbing belt, and under his body armour he wore a thin, dark-blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and an Arab shemagh scarf tied around his neck. His clothing bore no rank, no insignia, no identification of any kind. With his swarthy complexion, civilian-length haircut and thick black beard he could easily have passed for an Arab if not for his crisp London accent. He even held himself like a civilian, unarmed save for his pistol and casually chatting away to a tent full of curious squaddies as though giving a speech at a dinner party.

"Now, I'm sure you know that even these days the intel we get on the streets is piss-poor at the best of times, but this has been confirmed by three HUMINT sources as recently as 0400 hours and a rudimentary sweep of the area by an RAF Nimrod spy plane has revealed a hotbed of what we can safely assume is insurgent activity. The ROE stand – you are not to fire unless fired upon, but to be honest I don't think you'll have to wait that long for that to happen."

Glances were exchanged amongst the Marines, but there were smiles on nearly every face as Jimmy continued, "You'll be pleased to know that a general from the US Central Command has agreed to loan you an AC-130 Spectre gunship to provide close air support for this operation."  
_Bloody hell, thought Dice, unable to stop herself from grinning. A Nimrod gives this place a once-over to check the intel's solid and and now the Yanks are giving us an AC-130 to play with? _

It seemed a lot of trouble to go to over a bunch of poppy-dealers, but no-one was complaining, least of all her. She'd never worked with an AC-130 before, but she'd heard the stories. To say that she was excited was the understatement of the century.

Dice remembered hearing once that the Vulcans dump so much brass on the floor of the aircraft that the crews have to use shovels to clean them out at the end of the night. Unlike its little brother, the C-130 Hercules, the Spectre comes with a devastating array of on-board weaponry. Twin 20mm Vulcan miniguns which fire at 7,200 rounds a minute each, a 40mm Bofors cannon that can fire up to 100 rounds a minute, and the piece de résistance – the 105mm Howitzer, which fires a 44lb shell at a rate of up to ten rounds a minute. To compliment this, it also boasts a sophisticated array of sensors and equipment operated by a crew of thirteen, including two pilots. The poor maneuverability of the gunship means that it is highly vulnerable to rockets and anti-aircraft fire, so they can only come out to play at night, but flying under cover of darkness they are essentially flying tanks, capable of engaging three different targets at once.

"You'll also have one extra man accompanying on this operation," Jimmy told them, nodding towards the second man, who had been silently observing the proceedings with his arms folded across his chest. "This is Jackal. He's a sniper from the..." Jimmy hesitated for a second, as though considering his options, then continued "err...the Parachute Regiment."

It took everyone present less than five seconds to work out that the other guy wasn't in the Paras. He might have been once, but not any more.

He stood at about six feet tall, his face covered by a balaclava so that only his piercingly blue eyes and the bridge of his nose were visible. The only other place his skin showed was where the sleeves of his jacket didn't quite touch his gloves, and from what little could be seen of it he'd picked up a nice tan, indicating that he'd been in Afghanistan for quite some time.

Instead of the standard-issue Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP) camouflage the Marines wore he was clad entirely in digital desert camouflage, with his BDU's featuring integrated knee and elbow protection but no rank or insignia besides a subdued, sand-coloured Union Jack flag patch on his right arm. Like Jimmy he wore civilian hiking boots, with his blood type secured to the side of his right foot by a strip of tape ("That's bad luck," someone had darkly informed her later) and unlike the more bulky helmets the Marines wore, his lightweight, sand-coloured ballistic helmet was cut away around the ears and had a pair of sophisticated night-optic devices (NODs) mounted on the front. His pistol was held in a quick-release holster on his chest rig, and slung over one shoulder he carried a bloody great valise that was almost as tall as him.

_Christ_, Dice found herself thinking._ What the fuck's he got in that?_

After the briefing was over, Jimmy vanished in typical spook fashion. Dice didn't see where he went, and honestly didn't much care – she was still focusing on Jackal, who had motioned for Dice's platoon leader and was apparently having a quiet exchange of words with him. She caught the words "capable" and "applied" from the Lieutenant, who then called her over with a strange expression on his face.

"Sir?" she said, standing not-quite-to attention with what she hoped was an expression of innocent curiosity on her face.

"Corporal - you're a qualified marksman, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you are aware that sniper teams work in pairs?"

Dice bit down on a sarcastic remark very much like one of the many that had got her in trouble with officers before. "Yes sir, I am aware."

"Well...Jackal needs a spotter," the Lieutenant said, putting a strange inflection on the name as though unfamiliar with its meaning. "So you're it until he finds someone better."

"He won't, sir," Dice replied through clenched teeth, her hands balling into fists at her sides. She didn't know whether the LT was deliberately taking the piss out of her in an attempt to show off, but in any case she didn't like being spoken down to. She didn't give a shit what this 'Jackal' was - Paras or not, if the uptight bastard thought he could get away with talking to her like she was some kind of invalid who was lower on the food chain than him then she'd punch his lights out.

However, any doubts she had were assuaged when the masked man extended a hand for her to shake. She took it, and pumped it several times, matching his grip pound for pound as subtle way of warning him that messing her about would be a very bad idea.

"Hi. Corporal Hankard, 40 Commando. The lads call me Dice."

"Nice to meet you," he replied. "Just call me Jackal."

She blinked, slightly taken aback by his politeness. It was hard to place his accent because his voice was slightly muffled by the mask, but she thought she could detect the trace of an East London accent in there somewhere. She was a Cockney herself, so she had an ear for that sort of dialect.

Introductions over, they'd sat outside the tent for a while whilst waiting for the go order. They were to be dropped a half-mile out from the target by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter and make up the rest of the distance as quietly as possible on foot – they couldn't rule out the possibility of anti-air defenses and a possible shootdown. Contrary to popular myth, not all Arabs were the simple, nomadic ragheads of Hollywood lore; they were ruthless, cunning, and a lot better-equipped than the Western media liked to make out they were.

The plan was that the chopper would touch down for just a few seconds, just long enough for the men to exfiltrate as a flight of two US Air Force F-16 fighters flew overhead. The boom of fast air was hardly an infrequent occurrence over the Helmand desert even in the dead of night; it wouldn't arouse suspicion, and it would mask the noise of the insertion.

Even so, the pilots didn't fancy hanging around. Dice didn't blame them. Take-off and landing were always the most dangerous parts of any pilot's job, and even more so at night where poor visibility meant that the crew were forced to use night vision goggles. The bloody things gave you no depth perception, and the fact that they weren't landing in an established LZ only heightened the danger. The rotor-wash of the chopper also kicked up dust and sand from the desert floor which had a tendency to spark when it hit the rotor blades, potentially illuminating their position to watching bad guys for miles around. The entire mission was a ballsy but potentially catastrophic assignment, the kind that had given the Royal Marines their well-deserved reputation; it would take meticulous planning to get them into the kill zone, but at least they could take comfort in the fact that once the shooting started it essentially came down to a combination of luck and firepower to ensure victory – and they had at least one of those in spades.

They both talked, but neither of them were really saying anything. To his credit, Jackal refrained from making any smart remarks about her being the only woman in the unit - or any of the other numerous things he could have taken the piss out of her for for - and he didn't talk to her as though she was an idiot or in some way inferior to him.

In fact, he treated her just like he'd treat any other soldier under his command.

He explained that he was a sergeant back in his unit, but obviously there wasn't a lot else he was at a liberty to tell her and although he was too polite to say so Dice privately suspected he was bored off his tits.

This must feel like babysitting compared with what you buggers usually get up to, she thought.

Eventually, however, curiosity got the better of Dice and she was unable to stop herself from blurting out the question that had been nagging at the back of her mind for so long. "Not being funny or anything, but what exactly are you doing here?"

Jackal shrugged. "Someone around here must have good connections, because I've essentially been drafted in as a BCR. Word is that you were short a couple of snipers, and since there were no other volunteers it looks like you're my number two."

Dice winced, noting, "no other volunteers." BCR meant Battle Casualty Replacement – to put it bluntly he was filling a dead man's boots, but years of practiced cynicism meant she wasn't surprised. They'd lost three men already this week to roadside bombs.

Perhaps he noticed the change in her expression, because he added, "The reason no-one else wanted to come is because the word is that there's jack shit going on around here. From the looks of it though, they're dead wrong."

Dice nodded. _This isn't just your standard bit of door-kicking so that the brass can tell the suits at Whitehall we're making progress,_ she told herself._ Why all the secrecy for a run-of-the-mill sweep? It's no secret that people grow poppies in this place, and there's no way in hell that we'd have all this outside support if we weren't on to something bigger._

"Yeah, mate. Personally, I reckon we're in for one hell of a night."


	2. Chapter 2

"Alpha One Zero, this is Zero. Be advised, AC-130 is entering your airspace at this time."

_So much for professionalism,_ Dice thought as her features creased into an enormous, shit-eating grin. _"Spectre" is about bloody right. Those rag-head wankers are in for the fright of their fucking lives._

She'd done an admirable job of containing her excitement at getting to work with an AC-130 thus far, not wanting to appear unprofessional in front of Jackal, but the prospect of seeing the flying tank in action coupled with the onset of adrenaline all soldiers got before a contact meant that in the end she was just another smiling idiot like the rest of the lads in the company. She couldn't tell whether Jackal was as excited as she was at getting to work with the gunship – the balaclava made it impossible to gauge his expression, and there was an almost robotic deliberation to his movements, his tone about as emotive as a slab of granite.

The Marines advanced slowly. No prizes for being first, and in any case the ground was treacherous – bumpy and stony with sudden cracks that seemed to appear from nowhere. Dice saw one such crack about a metre from her feet, a few scrubby plants bravely trying to force their way skywards. She adjusted her path; the last thing she wanted was to lose her footing.

To her left, a few feet away, Jackal sucked air through his teeth in a curiously high-pitched but quiet little whistling noise to attract her attention. Once that had been established, he motioned for her to join him and pointed with his left hand (the one not holding his rifle) to a ridge directly overlooking the village.

"All right – here's what's going to happen. We're going to set up overwatch and provide sniper cover for the rest of the assault force as they move on the village. We're going to kick the hornet's nest – with any luck, the AC-130 will deal with most of the hornets, and all your lot will have to do is stamp out the stragglers."

Dice nodded, silent, but taking notice of the way he'd referred to the Marines as _your lot_. Whether it had been intended to remind her that he was SF and therefore in charge she didn't know, but even during her time as a sniper in 3 Commando Brigade there had been a considerable amount of piss-taking and even outright snobbery amongst Marines who thought that they were somehow better simply because they were sniper-qualified.

This was true after a fashion; next to UKSF selection, sniper training was considered by many to be the most intense of all British military training regimes, but Dice had never had time for the glory-hounds who got a kick out of putting others down. Upon first joining the Royal Marines, she too had received her fair share of bullying and harassment simply for being female, but she'd since discouraged any such advances in the same way she'd dealt with a bully who had thought it would be funny to pull her shorts down from behind in gym class when she was at school; like the first idiot who'd pushed her too far, a sex-starved Marine who thought he could cop a feel whilst she was asleep had been sent to the infirmary with a bloody nose and a badly swollen set of bollocks.

"Zero, this is Alpha One Zero. Target area in sight. Rifle One is moving to set up overwatch whilst main assault force moves into position."  
Rifle One what their ad-hoc sniper team had been designated for the purposes of this operation. They would alternate between sniper and spotter roles if needed so as to prevent eye strain, but as Jackal was currently the shooter and Dice the spotter, they were designated Rifle One-One and Rifle One-Two respectively. Zero was the call-sign for the Ops Centre back at Camp Bastion; over the net, the name of the Royal Marines' patrol was Alpha One Zero, with the company commander's personal call-sign being Alpha One Zero Alpha and the senior officer at the ops room designated Zero Alpha.

Being a radio operator must be a right pain in the arse, Dice found herself thinking. You get one bloody letter in the wrong place and you've ended up passing an order on to completely the wrong person.

"Copy, Alpha One Zero," came the reply over their headsets.

"Zero Alpha, interrogative; what's the ETA on that AC-130, over?"

"Imminent," came the reply, and although no-one said anything after that besides a bland "Copy" from Jackal, Dice knew that the general reaction was the same as hers.

They'd all heard the transmission. Each member of the patrol carried their own Personal Role Radio or PRR, a microphone and earpiece secured to the user's head by a strap and connected to a box about the size of a packet of cigarettes on their webbing vest. PRR's are designed to be on permanent receive so that everyone can hear incoming radio chatter, but if you wanted to broadcast you had to press the transmitter button; this prevented the net being flooded with noise every time someone talked or breathed.

Jackal and Dice branched off as the rest of the patrol moved on, heading towards a sheer rock face maybe forty metres high that walled off the valley. The crest of the rock formation overlooked the village; it would make a perfect observation post, but there wasn't a slope or any other way up it in sight.

There was nothing else for it. They were going to have to scale the cliff.

"I'll lead," Jackal said, following her gaze and realising that they'd both met the same conclusion.

"Hell of a climb."

"Don't worry," he told her as he shrugged off his Bergen (backpack) and began rummaging through it. "I've bought some friends."

A friend – also known as a spring-loaded camming device (SLCD) – was an essential piece of equipment for mountaineering. It was a perforated, crescent-shaped piece of metal that could be wedged into cracks in the rock face, allowing the user to get a line up, and Jackal had apparently bought enough for both of them. From his Bergen he then produced forty metres of tough, prehensile rope and a roll of webbing tape; along with his friends, that was everything he needed to get a line up to the top of the cliff so Dice could follow.

It took him about twenty minutes, scanning for cracks in the cliff to wedge his friends into before threading the line through them. Once he'd reached the top, Dice helped him haul up both their Bergens and the huge valise he'd been lugging around with him ever since the briefing using the line he'd set up; that done, it took her about fifteen minutes to make her ascent. It was nothing too new, although it was by no means easy. She'd done a mountaineering course during a joint training exercise with the Canadian Army not too long ago, and whilst the Alps were a little different to Afghanistan the same principles applied.

Job well done, but there was no time for back-slapping. They had to press on.

Keeping low and moving as quickly and quietly as possible, watching their footsteps so as not to take a wrong step and A: dislodge any small rocks that could alert anyone in the valley below to their presence or B: fall to their deaths.

Eventually they reached a rocky outcrop which was dotted with sparse shrubs, little more than skeletal clusters of branches with some tiny, browning leaves on them. Dice glanced at it and grimaced; Iraq had been fucking awful, sure, but Afghanistan was about as close as she'd ever got to hell on Earth. It was like the country just sucked the life out of everything; if it wasn't scorching, barren desert it was harsh, jagged mountains topped with ankle-deep snow. One extreme or the other. There really was no such thing as compromise in this place.

"This'll do," Jackal said, by which Dice suspected he meant _This is a pretty crap spot for an OP but what choice do we have -_ there wasn't any cover besides the scraggly bushes and a few small rocks, so they'd just have to hope for the best and count on cover of darkness to conceal them.

Abruptly, the comms crackled into life. "Alpha One Zero, this is Zero; be advised, Fourth Horseman is above you, over."

Jackal shot Dice a sideways glance as if to say _Bloody Yanks, eh?_ and she grinned. Spectre pilots had the kind of call-signs only the Americans could get away with; no Brit pilot would ever be sad enough to call themselves The Fourth Horseman.

"Alpha One Zero's moving into position," Dice noted as Jackal set down the valise and shrugged off his Bergen. Out of the latter came several huge magazines that were far too big for his rifle, a whopping great thermal sight, a sophisticated-looking rangefinder, and two pairs of ear defenders.

That could only mean one thing.

Dice's jaw went slack with amazement for a second as Jackal unsheathed the valise at last, confirming her suspicions.

_Jesus, Mary and Joseph._

It was a Barrett M-82 sniper rifle.

Known in the US Army as the M107 and more colloquially as The Big Bad Mother Of All Sniper Rifles, or the Light Fifty for short, the Barrett was a truly fearsome beast. She'd seen one before but never fired it, and it was all she could do not to drool as Jackal hefted it. The thing was so massive and heavy that it couldn't be fired from anything but a static position, and it was every bit as terrifying as it looked, weighing in at five stone (fourteen kilograms to its American designers) and measuring five feet from the end of its square-shaped stock to the tip of its grooved muzzle. The Yanks had designed it primarily for taking out armoured vehicles, and it did the trick for both drivers and engine blocks. Such were the power of the huge .50 calibre rounds it took, it was also excellent for destroying fortified positions – to say nothing of infantry.

_Put a round through an AQT's kidneys with that and he'd able to stick a hand through the hole in his guts to wipe his arse,_ Dice thought, digging her teeth into her bottom lip to stop herself from giggling.

Although Dice knew the basics of how weapons worked, as all soldiers did, she'd never much cared for people who could reel off all the technical data of a rifle from memory. In her opinion, memorising facts you'd read on Wikipedia was no substitute for actually getting hands-on experience, and in any case all she really cared about was whether the gun went bang when you pointed it at someone and pulled the trigger. There was little doubt in her mind that in this case there would be a very loud bang indeed; the .50 cal rounds were enormous, almost twice the size of Jackal's thumb and ending in wicked-looking points. It was her understanding that simply put, the more gunpowder you put in a bullet the further it would fly, and if she remembered correctly the Barrett had an accurate range of up to 2,000 metres. That meant a hell of a lot of gunpowder.

"You ever used one of these before?" Jackal asked her. She shook her head, so he continued. "When I was in Kosovo a few years back, the KLA had one of these that they used to fire from the back of a modified van. Cocky twats played merry hell with isolated patrols in bandit country for a good few years until me and a few of my mates got together and spoiled their fun."

She nodded, unsure of what to say in response to that. Jackal's sort didn't speak freely about their jobs to outsiders, even the stuff that was in the past. Everyone knew the game. They didn't say, and you didn't push them. Maybe it was just overthinking on her part, but for him to come out with something like that-

A transmission from the Ops Room derailed her train of thought.

"Alpha One Zero, this is Zero; send loc stats. Fourth Horseman has identified two armed foot-mobiles on a cliff edge at grid: zero, niner..."

_Fucking hell_, Dice thought as the bearing was read out. _That's us._ The Spectre's crew could see both her and Jackal on their little screens, and she was uncomfortably aware of the fact that at the press of a button they could have been reduced to little more than bits of charred flesh and scorch marks on the sand.

To his credit, Jackal didn't hang about in telling the friendlies exactly where they were.

"Alpha One Zero, stand by. Rifle One is going to get the enemy's attention. We'll paint targets for the AC-130 – advise you lot to keep your swedes down whilst that's happening, over."

"Rifle One, Alpha One Zero Alpha. Copy. You are now weapons-free."

It was the sentence both of them had been waiting all night to hear.

"You see that hut at the North-East end of the village?" Jackal asked Dice, without taking his eyes off his rifle's scope.

Dice, who was sat next to him, adjusted her tripod-mounted spotter's scope. "I see it."

"Get eyes on the door to the left. I'm going to put a couple of shots into it."

"Yep. Eyes-on, fire when ready."

Between sniper pairs, sharing information is crucial. Whilst spotting for a target, the shooter's number two would give a permanent running commentary to confirm to the shooter what his mind is already telling him and allow him to focus completely on the kill.

Jackal gave the trigger a gentle squeeze, and in the same instant Dice understood why he'd brought the ear defenders. A high-velocity round travels faster than the speed of sound, so she saw the round before she heard it – except she didn't so much hear it as feel it. There was a tremendous _BANG_ as the bullet erupted from the muzzle of the rifle, and if Jackal hadn't been keeping a firm grip on it the thing probably would have broken his jaw. It was like hearing a miniature artillery piece firing; without the ear defenders it could well have deafened her, and the echo from the shot lasted a good ten seconds or so.

She witnessed the results firsthand. The round impacted just to the left of the door, throwing up a huge puff of dust that revealed a massive crack in the wall of the hut once it had cleared. There were frantic shouts in the distance; that had definitely got their fucking attention.

"You're off by half a metre there, mate."

"Alright, stand by. Adjusting."

Jackal reached into a pouch on the side of his vest and selected a yellow-tipped round, which he popped into the chamber of the Barrett. It was then Dice realised that although he'd opted to have his pistol in a quick-release holster on his chest, he'd specifically configured the pouches on his tactical vest so that they were at his sides. It made sense; he was sniping from the prone position, and you couldn't easily reach something if you were lying on top of it. It's paramount for a sniper to be comfortable at all times, and so Dice – who had her ammo and equipment pouches on the front of her vest – was in a sitting position for the same reason.

"Firing...now."

Jackal chambered a round, tightened his finger around the trigger once more and let the yellow-tipped bullet fly. This time it was dead-centre, and on impact it gave off a ball of light that illuminated most of the area surrounding the doorway. It was a flash-tip round, designed to let you know where your rounds were hitting, and in the light she could see a whole lot of guys in white pyjamas flooding out of the huts - all armed, most with rifles and some with rocket launchers.

"Good hit," Dice said. You stirred the fucking hornet's nest with that one."

By her estimation, it was about time the AC-130 crew earned their pay.


	3. Chapter 3

"Christ, it's turning into a sodding convention down there,"

Jackal's zeroing shots had sent the enemy apoplectic, and from the looks of things they'd also been alerted to the presence of the Royal Marines, who had been told to go firm, or hold their positions, by the company commander.

There certainly were a lot of the fuckers. There were blokes in robes and pyjamas flooding out of houses, from behind rocks and trees, so many and so fast that it seemed they were almost materialising out of the darkness. That old chestnut about moths to a flame wasn't very appropriate in this instance, Dice found herself thinking. It seemed Alpha One Zero had become a magnet, and the insurgents were extremely pissed-off iron filings.

In and around the village, dozens of muzzle flashes were winking on and off like faulty lightbulbs as the insurgents opened up on where they must have roughly guessed the Marines were. They seemed to be relying on the school of thought that the Yanks favoured – _if I fill every square inch of the air with lead then I'm bound to hit something sooner or later, right?_

_Wrong_, thought Dice, smiling wolfishly to herself as a quote from a war movie she'd watched with the lads a while back came to mind. _The grunt dies for a thousand poorly-placed rounds. The sniper dies for that one perfect shot._

In this instance, that couldn't have been more true. It was standard procedure (not to mention common fucking sense) to spread out in a firefight, to avoid bunching up and preventing one target; the Marines were spaced roughly five metres apart from one another, and shielded not only by the village wall but also the wadi in which they had taken up firing positions. A wadi is an Arabic term for a dry gully or riverbed, and it provided a trench of sorts that offered the Marines protection from the worst of the incoming fire. Short of a lucky direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade, they didn't have a lot to worry about.

The steady crack of the Marines' concentrated fire, punctuated by the intermittent thumping of their light machine guns, seemed somewhat weedy in comparison to the sporadic and sustained bleating of enemy fire coming their way; what the insurgents didn't realise, however, was that the assault force was just a decoy.

It had taken Dice a while to figure it out herself, but at long last it was starting to make sense why they'd been loaned that AC-130 in the first place, and why Jackal had been assigned to their unit in the first place. Like all soldiers of his ilk, he was schooled not only in the art of sniping but also of Forward Air Control (FAC), meaning that he not only had the authority to boss the Great Big Tank In The Sky around but also the know-how required to co-ordinate an effective strike. All they had to do was rely on the enemy's own bloated egos, and the stupid bastards would bait the trap for them.

It wasn't long before Jackal scored his first kill. With a little help from Dice, he managed to draw a bead on a target who was making a particular nuisance of himself, popping off RPG's from the second-floor window of a house before ducking out of sight to reload.

"He's at your eleven o'clock, mate. You see the smoke trail?"

"Last house from the left, yeah?"

"That's the one. You wait, he'll pop his head out any second now."

_Speak of the devil,_ Dice thought as the RPG man surfaced again. She watched as he shouldered the launcher, and for a moment she noticed him hesitating as though trying to decide who or what he wanted to shoot at first.

The very thought sent a surge of righteous anger through her.

_You terrorist cunt._

"You got him?"

"I got him."

Jackal fired. Dice saw the results of the impact first-hand through her spotter's scope. First there was a technicolour explosion of blood and flesh; then a split-second later there was an explosion that sent a massive gout of flame spewing upwards, taking most of the roof with it. The insurgent's finger must have tightened around the trigger of the launcher on reflex when the round struck him, for the RPG had evidently struck the roof, hopefully taking out a couple of his mates with it. She let out a long, slow whistle as bits of burning masonry rained down, the gutted building belching pillars of smoke skywards.

"Fucking hell! OK, so...two-man RPG team and probably 'couple more squirters on that floor...that must've been at least three or four more kills, eh?"

Jackal shot her a cheeky wink. She guessed that meant he was smiling, but that bloody mask made it impossible to tell.

After a few more kills, the VHF crackled into life and the company commander's voice came over the net, punctuated by a series of tremendous bangs that seemed to echo as Dice heard them first in the distance and then again in the static-laced transmission from their company commander.

"Rifle One, this Alpha One Zero Al-"

_BANG._

"-taking indirect mortar fire down here–"

_BANG. _

"–there any chance you could do something about it? Over."

_BANG._

"Negative, but I think I know who can. Stand by for CAS, over."

"Acknowledged. You have my express permission to hit these bastards with whatever it takes in order to stop those mortars. I repeat: the village is now a free-fire zone for anything outside of Danger Close. Affirm?"

CAS meant Close Air Support, and just as different types of bullet have different range, penetration and stopping power respective of their size, each piece of ordnance launched or dropped by an aircraft has its own minimum safe distance. For example, the "No Fire" range of a 105mm Howitzer is 700 metres; if you're within 200 metres of the target it's called "Danger Close", and if friendly troops are within the blast or ricochet radius of a Spectre's armaments then the crew must warn the friendlies and ask for clearance before firing.

"Roger that. Cleared hot for anything outside of Danger Close. Will relay, over."

Jackal thumbed his radio again, switching frequencies with the deftness of a piano player in the midst of a practised concerto.

She allowed herself a small smirk at that image; somehow, Jackal didn't strike her as the musical type. His voice had a rough, gravelly quality to it, making every other word sound as if he was about to start growling – was he a smoker, Dice wondered?

"Zero Alpha, Rifle One. Alpha One Zero has troops in contact; Alpha One Zero Alpha requesting air support. Over."

"Zero Alpha copies."

Via the Ops Room, Jackal guided the AC-130 crew on to any promising targets Dice happened to spot. They were spoilt for choice; everything and everyone in the village had been declared hostile, but it was the important to prioritise. To their immediate front – 12 o'clock – she could hear the _whump_ of the mortar firing, followed by several more muffled thuds. There was no point taking out random shooters when there were a couple of mortar crews dropping rounds on the heads of her mates down there. Silently, Dice urged the gunship's crew to hurry up, and as if in answer the Ops Room back at Camp Bastion came on the net again.

"Rifle One, Fourth Horseman has identified enemy personnel and mortar tubes in the village and will use 40mm's to neutralise."

"Zero Alpha, Rifle One-One; acknowledged."

It would take the OC himself to sign off a Danger Close strike, but in this instance the threat to the troops on the ground was minimal. The Forty Mike-Mike packed a hell of a punch for something that was about the size of a can of Coke and she certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when it hit home, but by her estimation the rest of Alpha One Zero were about 300 metres away, and in good cover.  
Jackal and Dice had distance and elevation on their side, and as luck would have it they also had an excellent view of the proceedings.

Five rounds came down in quick succession, and even from a distance the results were inherently spectacular to Dice in the way that all friendly air support is to ground-based infantry units. First came the muffled thud of the Howitzer firing, then the rhythmic booming of the rounds as they hit home; the explosions reminded Dice of enormous, glowing flowers as they blossomed outward, illuminating the silhouettes of the village's simple mud huts and spewing a deadly volley of shrapnel outwards before wilting into nothingness.

"Fucking have a bit of that, you bastards," Dice whispered. If Jackal echoed the sentiment he didn't show it; his voice was as devoid of emotion as his covered face.

"Fourth Horseman, Rifle One," he radioed the pilot. "BDA. Repeat: BDA."

He was asking for a Bomb Damage Assessment - basically, he needed to know how effective the strike had been. Was the fire mission successful? Did the target merit an additional strike? Was there a good effect on the target? Even with a good line of sight on the target area, all the smoke and shit that had been thrown up by the explosion meant that it was hard for the sniper team to ascertain what was the situation on the ground, whilst the AC-130's forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera was capable of detecting heat even through fog and smoke. It was just a case of checking to see if the bodies were getting cold or not.

"Delta Hotel, Rifle One," the gunship's Fire Control Operator replied. "BDA: There's nothing left alive down there." A pause. "Correction: one adult male crawling away from the blast site." Then, presumably, to someone else- "You gonna get him? Wait- correction: He's stopped moving. Unsure how many KIA's but we're seeing lots of little heat spots down there."

Dice grinned. "Heat spots" equaled body parts, and whilst no-one could say for sure how many fighters they'd neutralised with that volley she was pretty confident that it must have been at least six.

_Not like anyone's keeping score though, right?_

"Rifle One be advised, we're coming back around for another pass. You've got us for ten more mikes of playtime; still picking up a lot of movement down there, over."

Jackal was about to reply when a clamouring in the village silenced him. Dice could hear it too; the harsh, incessant, and unmistakeable chattering of a heavy machine gun, audible even over the din of the Marines and insurgents already exchanging fire, and as their scopes swivelled back and forth in a search for the source of the noise an urgent yell of "Vehicles inbound!" buzzed over the VHF.

"Everyone get your fucking swedes down!" the speaker added, forgoing radio protocol as a lethal hailstorm of bullets raked the dirt around the wadi. The Marines didn't need telling twice, but even though the wadi afforded them some cover from the incoming fire they were now pinned down by the incoming fire, meaning they couldn't move or even mount an effective counter-attack.

"Rifle One, Alpha One Zero Alpha," came the company commander's voice once more over the radio, urgency creeping into his voice as the transmission progressed. "We're taking heavy and direct fire down here. Multiple positions."

Then things went from bad to worse.

"Contact casualty. Two men down. Wait out."

Dice bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as the SitRep was read out. One of the Marines, a new recruit from Essex who Dice hadn't spoken to more than once or twice, had been caught by a stray round from an enemy machine gun. The other, a Scottish Marine by the name of Eddie Tait, had been shot by a sniper armed with a Dragunov sniper rifle – nowhere near as powerful as the Barrett but still a seriously nasty weapon in the hands of someone who knew how to use it. The bullet had entered through the side of his body armour, just under the armpit, bounced around inside and taken out a bit of his right lung on the way out.

Dice liked Eddie. The light machine gunner for his section, he was a big, scary-looking fucker from Glasgow who stood at about six foot two and had a beaky nose and piercing eyes that made him look a bit like a hawk – not that anyone would tell him that to his face. Dice hadn't been able to understand a fucking thing he was saying the first time she'd heard him speak; because of his Glaswegian dialect and thick accent, every other word with him was "wee" or "aye", and everything he said came out as a guttural rumble on account of the fact that he smoked like a chimney. However, in spite of his intimidating appearance he was one of the nicest blokes Dice had ever met.

When she'd first joined 40 Commando she'd taken a lot of shit from some of the other guys in the company who saw her either as inferior, or an opportunity to get their willy wet, or both. Eddie had always looked out for her on and off the battlefield – aside from discouraging the persistent twats who wouldn't shut the fuck up and leave Dice alone, the gentle giant had also been more than happy to share his smokes with her. He'd said that she reminded him of his little sister.

The thought of having to explain what had happened to Eddie to that sister – and whatever other family he had back in Glasgow – made Dice feel sick.

"Listen," another voice said, laced with desperation and static from the background noise, "There's fuck-all we can do. We can't move an inch – we need some fucking help down here!"

Hearing your mates panicking is always unpleasant; being unable to do anything about it doesn't help.

"Copy that. Stand by for sniper support."

Jackal took his thumb off his radio's transmit button and glanced over to Dice, taking his eye off his rifle's scope for the first time since the casualty report had come in.

"D'you want to take this one?"

"You what?"

"Do you fancy doing a bit of sniping? I'll spot for you."

Despite the urgency of the situation, Dice grinned. She didn't want to look unprofessional in front of Jackal, but she was chuffed to bollocks at the prospect of getting to fire the Light Fifty – much less take out some of the bastards who'd shot her mates.

"Oh, fuck yeah. Pass us it here, then."

"Take your thumb off the stock," Jackal warned her as she dug the rifle into her shoulder. "And grip it good and tight so's it doesn't recoil off your shoulder and crack you in the jaw."

His tone was warning, but not patronisingly so; so far he hadn't once talk down to her or assumed that she needed to be spoon-fed, and she liked that.

"Get eyes on the vehicle on the right. Your two o'clock."

The insurgents were using technicals - open-backed civilian pickup trucks with mounted. Jackal had seen them used by everyone from American special forces in Iraq to anti-Gadaffi fighters in Libya, and back when he'd been operating in Africa he'd learned that despite their shortcomings they were a status symbol of sorts amongst Somali warlords. Their main advantages were speed and mobility, which had made them popular to clandestine forces, but they offered very limited protection and were no match against heavier vehicles such as tanks – or a Barrett .50 cal.

Dice's lip curled as her scope framed the gunner hunched over the technical's turret – it looked a bit like an AK-47 but bigger, belt-fed and mounted on a tripod, with a fearsome-looking muzzle and a box magazine with a seemingly infinite ammo capacity. The guy must have been firing for about a full half-minute now and he'd not once stopped to reload.

"Got it."

"Do the gunner, then put a round into the engine block – put the fucking thing out of commission for good."

"Alright."

The Barrett bucked against Dice's shoulder, the recoil kicking up a cloud of dust, and Dice was unable to suppress a smirk as the round hit the gunner in the chest, hurling him off the back of the flatbed and literally knocking him out of his sandals like a puppet on strings. The effect was strangely comedic, and she bit down on the urge to laugh.

"Good hit. No more gunner on that one."

"OK. Adjusting."

The ammo box in her sights, Dice's finger tightened around the trigger again, but instead of the tremendous bang he'd been expecting there was a hollow-sounding metallic _click_.

"Ah, shit! I'm out. Need a mag change."

"Check my bag. There should be...hang on. Try these."

Jackal pawed through the bag for a second, then passed a couple of magazines to Dice. Rather than having yellow or red tips, however, the rounds in them were grey-tipped. He didn't say what they were, and, not wanting to spoil the surprise, she didn't ask.

"Same again. No change wind speed or target position. Fire when ready."

There was a thunderous boom as Dice squeezed the trigger, and when the round impacted the technical it ploughed straight through the casing, igniting a small fire and scaring the shit out of some cheeky sod who'd been using it for cover.

"Christ!" Dice said breathlessly, "What the fuck was _that_?!"

"Armour-piercing. It's got a strengthened casing and a specially-tipped nose so it does more damage, and a bursting charge in the body to finish the job."

"Fucking sweet."

She emptied the rest of the magazine into the technical's engine block, rupturing the fuel tank; after a second it exploded, peppering the insurgents to either side of it with razor-hot shrapnel and burning it down to a charred skeleton.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention – those grey-tipped rounds are bloody expensive, so don't use to many or my QMS is going to do his nut."

"Oh, all right tightwad. I won't use any more."

The ghost of a smile played about Jackal's lips beneath his balaclava.

"I'm only joking. Knock yourself out. The-"

Whatever else he had to say was lost in the thunderclap of an explosion somewhere close to the two snipers. It was so horrendously loud that Dice couldn't even pinpoint whereabouts it had been until she felt a stinging barrage of tiny rocks peppering one side of her face.

_Shit_, she found herself thinking. _That was definitely inside of Danger fucking Close._


	4. Chapter 4

"Looks like they found some more mortars," Jackal observed.

Dice's lips were shaping the words _No shit?_ when she heard another shell whistling towards them. She counted three full seconds before it hit, landing behind them this time, and felt the ground shudder beneath her and a barrage of tiny rocks bouncing off the back of her helmet.

"We need to get the Spectre on those fuckers before they dial in on us," Dice said, feeling more angry than scared – they'd shot two of her fucking mates, and now they were dropping bombs on her and Jackal._ Wankers._

"Tell you what," Jackal said, "You can do the honours. Here-"

He reached over to her PRR, fiddled with it for a second, then said "Go ahead."

Dice hesitated, wondering if he was taking the piss for a second until he gestured for her to proceed. Then she cleared her throat, thumbed the "talk" button and said "Fourth Horseman, come in."

A hiss of static and the crash of another mortar smacking into the face of the cliff below them preceded the answer from the AC-130's Fire Control Operator.

"This is Fourth Horseman. Whom do we have the pleasure of speaking to, over?"

In spite of herself, Dice grinned. The FCO clearly thought he sounded as suave as fuck; he was probably nursing a hard-on and imagining Lily Allen as he listened to her voice.

"This is Rifle One requesting a fire mission, over. "

She could hear a faint chuckle from the other end as the FCO responded; evidently, the rest of the crew could hear too. "We'll see what we can do, Rifle One. Interrogative; what are you wearing? Over."

"Be advised, I'm sniping in a lacy little black bra and suspender set," she replied drily. "Now could you guys take out those vehicles and maybe do something about those mortars, please? Over."

The response was meant to be sarcastic, but judging by the wolf-whistles in the background and the tone of the FCO's voice the AC-130 crew were apparently enjoying it regardless.

"Sure thing, hot stuff. Stand by - we'll get right on that, over."

They waited a several seconds, listening to the distant crackling of gunfire.

"OK, we have your target. Six mobile heat sources moving around a static one - that'll be the mortar tube. Will engage with forty mike-mike and then mop up any leakers with twenty-five mil. That sound good?"

"Yeah mate, it does. No change friendlies, anything outside of Danger Close is fine. Over."

"Gotcha. By the way, it looks like they're putting another round down the tube now, over."

"OK. Cheers for the heads-up, over."

Dice didn't see the shot, but she heard the thunderous booming overhead - the AC-130 must have been right over them, she reflected - and watched the impact of the shells with some satisfaction. A rage of yellow and orange flames chewed through the ranks of the insurgents before petering out into clouds of smoke, and with each flash she saw bits of metal and wood go flying as the rounds pummeled the technicals. The one on the left took three shells in a row before exploding, crumpling like a toy car under the blows of a hammer. Dice and Jackal watched, the distance tremors of the explosions punctuated by radio chatter from the AC-130 crew.

"Clean up that signal."

"Recalibrate azimuth sweep angle, adjust elevation scan."

"Gun ready."

"Pax near the treeline. You gonna get 'em?"

"Shot!"

"Hit."

"Gun ready!"

Another mortar shell smashed into the cliff edge and detonated, sending prickly heat washing over the left side of Dice's face and momentarily deafening her in one ear.

"OK - good work on those flatbeds, but we're still taking mortar fire up here, Danger Close."

"Solid copy. Taking out the base plates now."

Dice heard the thump of the guns firing a half-second before "Shot!" buzzed over the radio. First the AC-130 decimated the mortar crews with the 40mm; then they cut down the survivors as they tried to run with long streams of 25mm cannon-fire. The noise was horrendous; streaks of red tracer cut through the air, throwing up pillars of dust and sand where they hit and literally cutting several insurgents in half.

"Sounds a bit like one of those machines that counts tenners at the bank, doesn't it?" Dice asked Jackal as the gunship let loose with another strafing run from the Vulcan cannon, and continued to turn the insurgents to pureé. Jackal didn't reply. Instead, what was visible of his brow furrowed as he gave her a curious look; not one of disapproval but of confusion, as though he honestly didn't understand what she was going on about.

For a second, neither of them said anything. Then they both winced as a piercing _crack_ rang out, followed by a sharp hiss of parting air above and to the right of them.

"_Shit_," Jackal spat, as though he'd set the timer on the toaster wrong and burned his toast. "Sniper."

"I don't see him."

"He's got to be at our twelve, 'else we wouldn't be able to hear the report so clearly."

Another _crack_. The whizz of the bullet passing was closer this time, about a metre or so above Dice's head.

"Fuck, his aim's getting better."

"Give me a minute," Jackal said. He was scanning for movement, scope glint, a muzzle flash...anything that might have betrayed their own position and could do the same for the enemy sniper.

He heard the next round being fired a second before he saw the flash. This time the round was a little low, impacting the face of the cliff and tunneling into the rock; the sniper had adjusted too much, and his shot was still off.

"Two. Rooftop, second from the right. You see him?"

_Two o'clock, first-floor window of the second building on the right-_ Through the Barrett's scope, Dice found the target, her finger coiling around the trigger. Even in the daytime you might have been forgiven for missing him; the clever fucker had a friend spotting for him, and they had sheet slung over them, which broke up their outline and made them look like a shapeless mass as well as masking their heat signature. She could almost have respected his ingenuity if he wasn't a murdering piece of shit who'd shot one of her mates.

"Yeah, I got him."

Dice squeezed the trigger, and the Barrett thundered and kicked against her shoulder. The round impacted on the rooftop, and Jackal grimaced behind his balaclava as the dust settled.

"You were off by a half-metre there," Jackal told her.

"For fuck's sake!"

"OK, OK. Calm down. Just try again."

Dice knew he was just trying to be helpful, and bit down on the urge to snap at him. She was pissed-off that she'd missed her shot, but there was no sense taking it out on Jackal so she saved her aggro for the enemy as she adjusted the sight.

_Next time. Next time I'll fucking have you, matey._

That was another thing Hollywood always got wrong; snipers didn't always aim for headshots. With something as big as a Barrett you didn't need to anyway, but a bullet in the kidneys from most sniper rifles could stop a man as effectively as half a magazine from an assault rifle, so you aim for the largest part of the body visible. However, since the gunman was lying prone his head presented the largest target, so that was what Dice settled the cross-hairs on.

She was just about to apply pressure to the trigger when she felt a tremendous wallop on her helmet, as though someone had kicked her in the head; a split-second later came the sound of the shot itself.

"Fucking hell!" she gasped, spots dancing in front of her eyes. "What the bloody Christ was that?"

"Jesus, I fucking felt that and all," Jackal said, clamping a hand on Dice's shoulder and giving her a shake to get her attention. "Are you all right, mate?"

Dice blinked groggily, shaking her head like a dog trying to rid its ears of water. "Uh- yeah, man. I think so. My head fucking hurts, but yeah. Fuck. I'm OK. Am I hit?"

"I think so." Jackal had seen the sniper firing, so he worked it out quicker than she did. "That shot was dead-on, I reckon. Good thing his aim was just a bit high."

"Jesus, yeah. If that had been a bit lower or I'd not been wearing my helmet I'd be brown bread. Is he still there?"

Jackal's gaze returned to his scope, and he gave a grunt of irritation. "Nah, him and his mate have fucked off. Cunts."

"Probably 'cause he thought he'd fucking topped me and all," Dice said, giving a somewhat breathless and shaky laugh. "Fucking 'ell," she said again, her Cockney accent bleeding through in her excitement and turning the word fucking into_ faarkin'_. "I can't believe I just got shot in the 'ead!"

Apparently Jackal didn't find it as funny as she did, because he thumbed his radio mike again, and when he spoke there was a grim edge to his voice that she couldn't remember hearing previously.

"Fourth Horseman, Rifle One. How are you for fuel, over?"

"Be advised Rifle One, the sun's coming up and we're approaching bingo fuel. We can give you one more pass and one pass only. Send targets, over."

"You see that domed structure near the North-Eastern end of the village? That's where they cook their bread, so it should be giving off heat. Get eyes on that."

"Uh...roger, we see it. Over."

"Track that about ten metres to the South. There's a building with a flat roof at the top of it, the second one from the right. I need you to put a 105 through that. Anything else is on you. Nearest friendlies are...sixty, sixty-five metres out. Affirm?"

"Copy. 105 on the structure with the flat roof at grid: 46673896. That's Danger Close for ground forces, but they should be OK if they keep their heads down. You're cool with that?"

"Affirmative. Give us...let's say a fifteen-second delay. Then you can light up that building and any other fucker in the kill zone."

"Roger Wilco."

Jackal relayed the message to the company commander, who then put the message out across the comms.

"Charlie Charlie One; AC-130 gunship standing by to send 105mm, recommend all ground call-signs stay in cover."

Charlie Charlie One is the general call-sign when a message goes out to all ranks, recognised across the British forces. However, Dice and Jackal had nothing to worry about - they were at height and in good cover. As luck would have it, they also had an excellent view of the target area.

Dice's lips moved silently as she counted down the time to impact. _Five, four, three, two-_

A deafening, echoing boom rang out from the heavens above them and an huge pink fireball streaked through the air, smashing straight through the roof of the building and sending sparks flying hundreds of metres into the air as it erupted in the biggest bang yet. Holy shit. The 40mm had been nothing compared to that big mother. Against the backdrop of the reddish-pink early morning sky, it was actually quite pretty - a private fireworks show, just for them. Fucking awesome.

"Got leakers. They're trying to head out the back."

"TV, can you PID any weapons?"

"Uh...yeah. Yeah, that dude just shouldered an AK."

"Then they're fair game. Smoke 'em."

Dice paused, waiting for the report of the 25mm strafe, but it never came. Instead, there was another boom from the AC-130's Howitzer and the banshee howl of an incoming 105mm shell, which rose to a crescendo as it streaked over their heads before culminating in an eye-watering torrent of churning flames. By the time the dust had settled and the smoke cleared, there was literally nothing left of the runners - just a few charred scraps of clothing, and a bloody great big crater outlined by an enormous scorch mark.

Then, in the wake of the devastation, there was silence, eerily abrupt and almost tangible in its intensity. Dice felt as though her eardrums were stuffed full of cotton wool until the AC-130's FCO came on the net again.

"TV, you seeing anyone moving down there?"

"Nah," the TV operator replied, sounding very satisfied as he gave the verdict. "BDA: all targets confirmed destroyed. They're history."

"Confirmed. Rifle One be advised, Fourth Horseman is at bingo fuel; we are RTB."

"Roger that," Jackal told the AC-130 crew. "Top-notch work tonight, lads. Great guns. Drinks are on me - next time you're at Camp Bastion just ask for Jackal, from "D" Squadron."

"Will do, man," TV said, sounding very matey as radio protocol was chucked out the window by some unspoken agreement. "Been a pleasure. Y'all take care down there - and tell your friend with the sexy accent to call me!"

Dice laughed, wondering how the crew would react if they knew the sniper with the sexy British accent was actually a stocky, flat-chested, ginger chain-smoker who hadn't even seen a shower in two weeks.

"You know, I reckon TV quite fancies you."

"Yeah. Him and everyone else on that gunship."

Dice unfastened her chin straps and removed her helmet, mopping sweat from her brow with a freckled forearm as she watched Fourth Horseman's outline shrink into the distance. The AC-130 crew put on one more show for them before they bugged out, however, popping flares and leaving a T-shaped outline emblazoned across the horizon - the so-called "Angel of Death" from which the AC-130's nickname stemmed.

"You've gotta love the Yanks. I wonder how much ordnance they spent on us tonight?"

Jackal's eyes crinkled at the edges, which Dice took to mean he was smiling. "They're a good bunch of lads," he said fondly. "Been a while since I've worked with an AC-130."

"I've never even seen one flying before, let alone got to boss one about. That was fucking brilliant."

"Mm. Let's get a look at your helmet?"

Dice passed it to him, and he whistled as he took in the extent of the damage. The fucker who'd shot her had been very unlucky - or she'd been very lucky, but either way it was a great shot. On the helmet's right side was an ugly gouge about five centimetres long and one deep; had it been ten centimetres lower, it would've probably taken the top half of her skull off.

She didn't really see any point in getting existential over it. She wasn't dead, and like any soldier worth his salt getting shot at didn't bother her. If anything, she felt kind of privileged. There weren't many people who got shot in the head by a sniper and lived to tell about it.

A big pile of spent brass had collected where they'd been firing off rounds from the Barrett - which was now folded, disassembled, and back in the valise - and Jackal was scooping them into his dump pouch. Dice held one of the rounds between forefinger and thumb, turning it over and dropping it into her palm. The brass felt cool against her skin, which surprised her - she'd been expecting it to still be warm.

"D'you mind if I keep this?" she said after a moment, showing Jackal the spent casing. He blinked mildly as though she'd just asked him what brand of toothpaste he used, then shook his head.

"'Course not." Then, after a pause- "Why?"

"Just as a souvenir, like. Something to remember this op by."

Jackal made a derisive sound at the back of his throat. "Suit yourself. Me, I'm just about ready to wrap this up, get back to Bastion, get some scoff down my neck and have a kip."

In spite of the fact that she'd been up nearly twenty-three hours, Dice felt wide awake. Still, the idea of a spot of R&R was always appealing after spending so long in the field.

"Ooh, yeah. And a nice cuppa tea and a hot shower."

"Now you're talking."

Having set up another line at the edge of the cliff, he tied it around the straps of the valise and lowered the bag down before putting the end of the line around the metal clip on his belt, called a karabiner - another essential piece of mountaineering kit. Stepping to the cliff edge, he gave the line a couple of sharp, firm tugs to secure it and glanced back up at Dice.

"Dice."

"Yeah? What's up?"

"You know...you saying about you wanting something to remember this op by? I must've run a hundred missions like this before, but you know what? I don't reckon I'm going to forget you in a hurry."

Not knowing what to say in response to that, she smiled sheepishly at him, feeling a hot flush rise in her cheeks as he dropped out of sight.


	5. Chapter 5

"Bloody hell."

Hearing Jackal's disembodied voice from below the edge of the rock face, Dice glanced up from her belt rig, which she'd been securing a rappelling line to. He sounded incredulous, the word _bloody_ stretching out to a full three seconds.

"You all right, mate?"

"Yeah. Come and have a look at this."

"Give us a minute."

Dice tugged the line secure, steeled herself, and stepped backwards onto nothing. It was a weird sensation, and as she dropped she felt her stomach lurch as the line went taut; her knuckles were white beneath her gloves, palms sweaty. It wasn't that she was afraid of heights, or even afraid that she might fall - she just hated the momentary feeling of having nothing beneath her feet. She'd done well in the Royal Marines, but doubted whether she'd have had the same degree of success in the Paras. Being cold and wet and dirty didn't bother her any more than it did any other Commando, but even the churning, ice-cold waters of the English Channel that she'd been made to swim in as a trainee Marine or the sand-blasted surface of an Afghan mountain were better than nothing. Water wasn't solid, but at least it was tangible.

Once the soles of her boots found the rock face it was just a matter of pushing off and letting her own momentum bring her back. Piece of piss. She kept a firm grip on the line, which she was confident wouldn't break as it was sturdy paracord, and after several jumps she came level with Jackal, who wordlessly indicated something embedded in the cliff face between them.

At first she'd thought it was just a jagged bit of rock protruding from the edge of an oddly-shaped crevice; then she'd focused on it, realised what she was looking at, and did a double-take. It was the tail fin of a mortar. The rest of the shell had burrowed into the rock without exploding, leaving a crater big enough for her to fit her fist into - not that she was daft enough to try, of course.

Dimly, she realised that if by some quirk of fate the mortar had been angled just a bit higher then it could well have killed them both, and for some reason she was struck with a bizarre urge to laugh.

Jackal must have seen the amusement on her face, because he asked "What's funny?"

"Dunno, mate. Maybe I'm still jacked-up on adrenaline, but...I dunno. It's just sort of funny that we're not dead, you know? Like, if that mortar had been ten metres higher then it could have blown us both to fucking pieces, but...yeah."

It was amazing how much emotion someone's eyes conveyed. Even though she could only see a fraction of his face she could tell that Jackal was looking at her like he thought she was completely mental, and yet the little crinkles around the corners of his eyes told her that he was smiling.

Then, to her absolute horror, he reached over to the mortar shell and began fiddling with it.

"What the fuck are you doing?!"

"Hang on," came the calm reply, "I'm just-"

Gripping the mortar's protruding tail fin between forefinger and thumb, he began to work it loose.

"-getting another souvenir for you."

After a few agonising moments, the mortar failed spectacularly to detonate and the fin came loose without incident. Jackal held it up to his eye as if he were a jeweler inspecting a diamond for imperfections; miraculously, the fin had none. It was dusty, but perfectly straight and unblemished save for a few scratches. Apparently satisfied with his prize, he waggled it before her like a dog biscuit and then made as if to throw it to her.

"Catch."

"Fuck off!"

A couple more jumps, and they were at the bottom. It had taken them less than five minutes to get back down, even with Jackal's mucking about with the mortar. He dropped it into the palm of her hand, and she flashed him a quick grin of gratitude as she pocketed it. For such a small piece of metal it was surprisingly heavy; she could feel it weighing down the lining of her BDU trousers.

"You special ops guys do this kind of shit often?"

"Yeah, fairly."

Hoisting the valise on to his shoulder, Jackal unslung his assault rifle. Two rifles for one man may have seemed excessive anywhere else, but for all its worth the Barrett was next-to-useless at anything other than long distances. It was heavy and unwieldy, and although Dice remembered hearing that the Yanks had made a shortened, lighter version designed to be fired from helicopters and the like Jackal's was the Full Monty. It was for this reason he'd brought his other rifle - a Canadian-made C8 Carbine.

Although one could be forgiven for mistaking the weapon for an American M4A1 at a glance, Dice knew the weapon well from her experiences training with the Canadian Army. The pros and cons of weapons were the primary topic of soldiers bonding the world over; the Canadians had been all too happy to let their British cousins have a go with their kit, and never having seen them before, they were fascinated by the Marines' L85 assault rifles. Dice carried the L85A2 variant, which was a vast improvement over the original; the A1 had a well-deserved reputation for being absolute bollocks, and had been highly unpopular with the troops using them. It made sense - a rifle was a squaddie's most important bit of kit, and if he couldn't rely on that it would obviously fuck with his morale. Credit where it was due to Heckler and Koch, though. The German company had done a bang-up job of fixing it, giving A2 a sturdier charging handle and an ejection system that didn't cause stoppages by throwing spent casings back inside the rifle, and the result was a perfectly serviceable bit of kit. Dice's pistol was also German - a Glock, holstered on her hip with seventeen 9mm rounds in the magazine.

Jackal's C8 was a CQB (Close-Quarters Battle) variant; at 10 inches the barrel was all of 4.5 inches shorter than the barrel of the M4A1, which made it easier to maneuver in tight spaces. He also had a foregrip that had an integrated, swiveling torch - the kind favoured by Navy SEALs, she'd heard - and a PEQ-2 infrared laser emitter, which was similar to a bog-standard laser sight except the beam could only be seen through night-vision goggles and was invisible to the naked eye. Unlike Dice, he'd opted to have his pistol in a quick-release holster on his chest; she recognised it as a Browning Hi-Power, a venerable handgun that had been introduced in the British Army in the 1930's and only recently been replaced by the Glock. It was a nice, sturdy shooter, and for a moment Dice was overcome by a curious mixture of nostalgia for the pistol that she herself had used on many occasions and jealousy of Jackal for being able to choose his own loadout. It would have been nice to have a lightweight chest rig like the one he wore rather than the bulky assault vest she'd been issued, and a pair of combat trousers with integrated knee pads rather than her own bog-standard velcro ones.

They both kept the muzzles of their weapons pointing at the floor as they advanced towards the village, moving at a brisk walk. The sky had gone from black to dark orange to pinkish-red; sun was cresting the horizon, golden beams of light lazily spilling through the cracks surrounding the village wall like melting butter. Dice had a sudden craving for Scotch pancakes.

The cravings evaporated as they drew nearer to the village. The atmosphere was hazy with smoke, although the charred and mangled remains of the technicals had burned themselves out long ago, and there was a sickly smell of cooked meat hanging in the air. Explosions and gunfire had scattered chunks of shrapnel, dirt and masonry about like confetti; scorch marks and long streaks of blood criss-crossed the dirt like a finger-painting done by a child whose palette consisted only of black, brown and red. Many of the bodies resembled nothing so much as burned lumps of firewood, and those that were recognisably human were invariably missing limbs or even heads, with arms that ended in black and pink stumps or muscle tissue and flesh stripped away by the heat to reveal the off-white bone beneath. One body caught Dice's eye, for it was relatively untouched - lying flat on his back in the dirt, the fighter's mouth hung open and his eyes stared at the sky as if in mild surprise. Shut his eyes and he might have looked like he was sleeping, save for the fact that the top half of his head was missing and a pinkish-grey substance was oozing out of his shattered skull.

Dice gave the mental equivalent of a shrug and didn't allow her eyes to linger over the body for longer than a few seconds. _Better you than me, mate_, she thought dispassionately, remembering the bullet she'd dug out of her helmet.

She could taste the acrid tang of cordite at the back of her throat from all the gunfire, and every breath she took in made her throat feel dry and scratchy so she took a little water from her CamelBak - another essential piece of equipment. The CamelBak was a long tube like a drinking straw with a nozzle on the end, connected a water-filled pouch mounted on to the back of her tactical vest by a webbing grid. A simple concept, but it made all the difference in the world. Not only did it mean you could take a drink at leisure without having to use an inconvenient and potentially noisy canteen, you could also carry more water and still manage to drink less of it - and as every sniper knows taking your water in small quantities is important because the less you drink, the less you need to piss.

The rest of Alpha One Zero melted into view as they approached. Just to be on the safe side, they both waved; the fact that they were waving with their left hands would clue anyone in that they weren't Arabs, because as everyone knew in Arabic culture the left hand was the one you wiped your arse with.

After waving in response, five of the Marines branched off from the larger group. One of them was the OC (Officer Commanding), Major Gary "Baldy" Morris. Morris was well-liked by the entire company, Dice included, and whilst you'd be forgiven for thinking he had no hair he was actually named for Garibaldi biscuits, which it was rumoured he was rather fond of. The nickname itself had stuck after word had got around that he actually quite liked the nickname, and whilst they all addressed him with the regulation "sir" or "major" where it was appropriate, he was affectionately known as Baldy to anyone within his unit. He had a reputation as being a tough and resourceful officer who put his men first and wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty, always leading from the front with just the four men of his HQ element for security, and was as ready to fight to the death for his men as any of them were for him.

"Cracking job with that air support, Sergeant," Morris said as he shook Jackal's hand. "There's a lot of my lads want to buy you a drink when this is done."

Jackal and Dice exchanged knowing sideways glances.

"Thank you, sir. You know that Corporal Hankard's got at least seven confirmed kills to her name now?"

"That so?"

"She's an excellent sniper, and it turns out she's pretty decent at directing air support - I reckon she'd do well in the special forces."

"I hope you're not thinking of stealing her from us, Sergeant. Be a damn shame for this unit to lose her."

Dice was silent, not quite knowing what to say; Morris wasn't the sort of officer who gave praise lightly, and she suspected Jackal wasn't either.

"What's the status of the two who've been wounded?"

With those words, the Major's smile faded; that told Dice everything she needed to know.

"The medics have got them both stabilised, but Private Lewis is in a bad way. They both need to get to a hospital sooner rather than later, but we need to confirm the village is clear before Bastion will send casevac."

_Lewis_. Dice felt a pang of guilt for not having remembered the lad's name earlier, followed by a hot surge of anger at the fucking dickhead who'd made the stupid jackshit call not to send that casevac for him and Eddie. There was nowt left alive down there after that AC-130 had given it a once-over - what the fuck more confirmation did they want?

"It's a crock of shit," Morris agreed, as though reading Dice's mind, "but we've had a couple of Chinooks shot down around Helmand recently. Bastion doesn't fancy taking any more risk than absolutely necessary."

Privately, Dice was of the opinion that soldiers were paid to take risks but bleeding to death waiting around for casevac was utterly fucking bone.

For a moment, Jackal was silent; then he thumbed the transmit button on his radio.

"Baseplate, you online? Yeah, it's Jackal. Listen mate, I need you to get Crowbar on the horn. Sitrep is we've got two WIA's, repeat: two WIA's from enemy SAF, both T2, both stable but in need of IRT as soon as you get can get it here."

To a civilian that might have been fucking Greek, but to Dice it made perfect sense. Casualties were ranked from T1-T3 in order of severity, T1 being most urgently in need of medical evacuation and T3 being the least urgent. WIA meant Wounded In Action and SAF was small arms fire; an IRT, she knew, was an incident response team - a Chinook helicopter with medics and an Apache gunship escort on standby back at Bastion.

"What are their ZAP numbers?" Jackal asked Morris. A ZAP number was the first two letters of your serial number and the last four digits of your surname that was read out over the net in order to identify a casualty. Dice's was HA2976; like most of the lads, she had hers written on the front of her body armour in black marker pen, but the company commander carried everyone's with him, as well as their blood types. He relayed these to Jackal, who in turn read them out over the radio along with a grid reference taken from a reading given to him by a GPS device mounted on his wrist.

"You get all that? OK. Copy, two-five mikes. Good stuff. Cheers, Jimbo." Jackal took his hand away from his radio, then told Morris, "Just tell your lads to hold on - the IRT's on it's way."

Dice stared in amazement. Crowbar, if she recalled correctly, was the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) for Helmand Province. Ordering an AC-130 about was one thing, but Jackal must have had some serious clout to put in a request like that to someone that high up the chain of command - and just for a couple of Bootnecks who he didn't even know?

_Just who the fuck are you, anyway? _She wondered silently as she studied what little could be seen of Jackal's face.

"We still need to confirm the village is completely clear," Morris reminded Jackal as the latter hefted his rifle. His half-smile told Dice that like any good officer, he was glad to know that help was on the way for his men but the faintly warning note in his voice was the bit of him that was still concerned about the possibility, however minute, of losing the IRT along with his men.

"Give me a couple of fireteams and a couple of minutes," Jackal said, meeting his gaze. "If there's any bugger left alive to shoot the Chinook down, then you can blame it on me."

For a moment Morris just stared, as though Jackal had dribbled on his boots. Then the smile returned as he replied "You'd better bloody well hope it doesn't come to that, Sergeant."


	6. Chapter 6

"Fan out. Three-metre spread. You catch any of these bastards twitching, put one in their fucking head."

From anyone else that might have sounded like macho bullshit, but the way Jackal delivered the order was anything but. His voice was as cold and sharp as a knife in an ice bucket, and completely devoid of emotion. It didn't sound vicious or derisive - it was almost businesslike, which was actually kind of unnerving.

Everything about Jackal seemed to be an anachronism, from his presence here to the way he acted. When she'd first met him he'd seemed stiff, almost robotic, but the way he'd calmly instructed on her on how to snipe with the Barrett and talked the AC-130 crew on to the targets in the village were at odds how he'd seemed genuinely concerned about Eddie and Lewis after they'd been wounded, and the way he'd called in a favour of such magnitude to get that IRT for them.

Considering this, Dice glanced back over her shoulder at the MTP-clad Commandos and was uncomfortably reminded of how much Jackal stood out in his distinctive digital camouflage BDUs; however, she soon came to realise he wasn't the only one.

Alpha One Zero had come prepared for any eventuality, and since none of the Marines spoke more than the most rudimentary Arabic they'd brought with him their interpreter. The man was an Afghan civilian whose real name was Ali Yusuf El-Amin, but for reasons of operational security and of brevity he was known almost universally as Alan. It had started off more as a joke than anything; someone had misheard him whilst he was introducing himself, but pretty soon it had stuck and "Alan", as he'd come to be known, didn't seem to mind.

He was a quiet man, mostly only speaking when spoken to but apparently eager to help in any way possible. He always seemed to have a slightly nervous smile on his face, as though he was constantly afraid that he'd somehow made a mistake and was going to be berated for it, but he took all ribbing and jokes made at his expense in his stride, and even though he was only a civilian he coped admirably well in combat situations. Unlike the Marines he wore mixed dress - a light blue T-shirt under his body armour, Nike running shoes and loose-fitting cotton slacks - and like Jackal he wore a balaclava to conceal his identity, not from the Marines but from any locals they came into contact with who could potentially identify him to the enemy.

Alan said he'd been born in Afghanistan several years after the Soviet invasion, the youngest and only surviving son of a family who had lost all their other children in the fighting against the Soviets - and later the Taliban. He'd spent much of his early life working on a modest farm his parents owned, and although he'd grown up in a village without running water and had been forced to walk seven miles to go to school he was not by any means stupid or even uneducated. He'd exhibited a knack for reading from a very young age, wrestling his way through complex passages of the Qur'an and gradually learning to grasp their meaning before progressing to English, which he'd excelled at.

Steadfast in the Muslim beliefs he'd inherited from his parents but not harboring any animosity towards the West, he'd survived life under the Taliban's regime by being smart enough to keep to himself, but had welcomed the coming of the NATO forces who'd ousted them from power in 2001. He said he was married with two young daughters, and wanted his wife to be able to choose for herself whether she went about her business with her head covered or not, and for his children to go to school and learn English as he had, but although he'd made an effort to keep as far from the fighting that had plagued his country as possible he'd recently chosen to offer his services to the British forces after the demand for interpreters had increased. It was a dangerous business, but at least it paid well - far better than the meagre living he and his family had been making for themselves before, tending a herd of skinny goats in a secluded patch of Afghan desert.

Alan may not have been military in the strictest sense of the term, but as far as Dice was concerned fair play to him for having the balls to speak out against the Taliban - or whatever it was the raghead bastards were calling themselves these days. Many still thought of them as Al-Qaeda or the Taliban and referred to them as such, but the truth was that the insurgency they were currently fighting had no proper name. Aside from the usual mish-mash of Arab _mujh_, Chechen _wahhbists_ and other Islamic extremists, generally of Pakistani origin, they were mostly just the scattered remnants of the force that had made a play at taking over the Middle East during the winter of 2011.

Having risen to power in the aftermath of the Arab Spring under the leadership of Khaled Al-Asad, the well-equipped paramilitary force had staged a violent coup in Saudi Arabia whilst the rest of the world's attention focused on the civil war unfolding in Russia at the time. To begin with, Al-Asad's forces had dubbed themselves The Tigers of the Revolution, but after the Americans had started conducting military operations against the group they'd simply referred to them as OpFor, an abbreviation of "Opposing Force".

The coup had been swift and bloody, culminating in the public execution of President Yasir Al-Fulani being broadcast on national television and prompting international outrage; both Britain and America had condemned Al-Asad's forces for brutality against civilians who had dared to oppose them, whilst Al-Asad himself had made a lot of grandiose speeches about Al-Fulani's "colluding with the West" and "freeing his people from the yoke of foreign oppression". In a surprise move, however, the United States, who had done everything in their power to keep their distance from the conflict in Russia, had launched a surprise attack on Al-Asad, arguing that it was neither an illegal invasion nor a declaration of war on a foreign country but rather an operation to combat terrorism, bring down an illegitimate regime and restore democracy.

Still, it had been mightily unpopular move even before so many the lives had been lost; some were just unhappy about what they perceived to be America interfering in the Middle East, whilst the more cynical claimed the decision to invade was prompted by oil.

The initial invasion of the Jeddah coast had been spearheaded by the US Marines' elite Force Reconnaissance battalions; what was meant to be a simple mission to kill or capture Al-Asad spiraling into a bloody campaign that had spilled over into Iraq and ended with the detonation of a nuclear device that had decimated Al-Asad's forces - along with 30,000 American service personnel and untold numbers of non-combatants. With their leadership gone and their forces scattered, OpFor had dissolved within a matter of days, and now that the fighting in Russia had also died down the focus of NATO's forces had drifted, with depressing familiarity, back to Afghanistan.

_Why is it always the bloody Arabs we end up fighting? _Dice found herself wondering._ If it's not us or the Yanks it's the sodding Russians._

It was even better when you took into account that back in the 80's, British and American special forces had been actively aiding the Taliban during the Soviets' ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan, supplying them with Stinger missile launchers so that they could cripple Soviet air assets, and when the same Western units had mobilised along with Northern Alliance troops back in 2001 against AQT forces during Operation Anaconda they'd been using mostly against Uzbeks and Chechens using Russian kit. OpFor, however, were far better-equipped than the Taliban had ever been, with access to bulletproof vests and modern assault rifles a world away from the looted Soviet weapons their predecessors had used.

Not that any of that had done them much good, Dice thought as her gaze roved over the carnage that lay before them. She tried to avoid looking too hard at the bodies - not because it was distressing, but because she couldn't afford to let her concentration waver. Still, there was no such thing as being too careful; nobody wanted one of these fuckers pulling a Lazarus on them.

"We're not picking up any ICOM chatter," one of the Commandos noted. ICOM stood for internal communications, meaning radio chatter from the enemy; listening on these transmissions could prove crucial in a firefight, but where the net would be buzzing with activity during a battle there was nothing to be heard at that moment but the hiss of radio static. It was a favourite tactic of insurgents to fake a retreat in order to trick advancing forces into walking into a trap, but even though the pounding they'd taken and they fight they'd put up had looked convincing enough, the sudden radio silence was making Dice skittish.

Another thing that was unnerving her was Jackal. He was silent too, his gaze was fixed on the nearest structure, unblinking. A sniper's glare. It was almost unnerving how at ease he seemed in this environment. He didn't seem to look past the carnage all around him so much as look through it, as though his target was the only thing in the world that mattered to him at that precise moment. It was easy to see how he'd become a sniper.

The door to the building was ajar; further inspection revealed that the explosions had loosened its hinges, and part of the ceiling had collapsed. It was a fairly basic dwelling, with a simple sleeping mat in place of a bed, a table with two smashed legs and a couple of chairs, both overturned. A dusty, blood-streaked hand poked out from under a pile of debris, but they all knew better than to touch any of the bodies they found. Anything was a potential booby-trap in Afghanistan.

The second building they checked was much the same story as the first. A trail of claret led them to the mutilated body of an insurgent who'd apparently been hit and dragged himself, bleeding, into what passed for a bedroom before he'd died. The rifle his fingers were still locked around was left where it lay, as were the boxes of food and ammunition stacked inside the doorway.

The next building looked to be some sort of drug refinery. There were several crudely-constructed metal cauldrons full of brown gunk in the kitchen, and used needles were scattered across the floor and worktops like spent brass after a firefight. It was common practice for enemy insurgents to shoot up before a battle; they'd all heard stories of fighters absorbing entire magazines before they went down, so jacked up on heroin that they couldn't even feel the rounds tearing into them, and here was the evidence. Apparently their fascistic interpretation of Islam said it was OK to beat women for walking around with their heads uncovered but was a little fuzzy on the subject of bankrolling a war through hard drugs.

"Fucking junkies. You watch yourself on those needles."

Jackal said nothing, but his eyes betrayed his disgust. He seemed ill at ease, for although he'd lowered his rifle he appeared anything but relaxed, scratching at his forearms and the nape of his neck as though suffering from insect bites.

"Let's get out of here," she heard him mutter after a search turned up nothing of importance. Dice got the distinct impression he couldn't wait to leave, and since his discomfort was making her uncomfortable in turn she was all too happy to oblige. She was starting to wish the AC-130 had wiped this particular building off the map completely.

Dust fell from the wooden steps to the basement, which creaked in protest under the weight of their boots and gear as they ascended. It felt good to get outside again. Even the burned-meat and cordite smell of the village was better than the air inside the house. The place smelled nauseatingly like burned toast, and something else that she couldn't put a name to but reminded her of an underpass near her house back in Essex. She used to walk past it every day on her morning route to school and avoided it at all costs when it got dark.

It was funny, the things the mind conjured up memories of when you were in the middle of a war zone. Her eyes caught a flash of dirty white streaked with red amongst the drab greens and browns, and when she realised that she was looking at a child's shoe the first thing she found herself remembering was, bizarrely, that her little brother had a similar pair.

Then she realised that the ankle poking out of the top of the shoe was connected to a leg, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach and her blood turned to ice water.

_Oh no. Oh God, no._

Jackal must have seen it too because the next thing she knew they were both converging on it, and soon several pairs of eyes were turned in their direction.

Christ, how she wished later that she'd not noticed it.

Little shoe. Little feet. Little legs.

Too many little legs for one person.

Even a little person.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she heard someone whisper behind her, and as she turned to look at Jackal she saw one of the men to the right of him crossing himself whilst the other clamped a hand over his mouth - whether to stop the smell going in or his own vomit from coming out, she didn't know.

She'd killed before in combat and not felt anything but a vague sense of satisfaction at having done her job well. She'd seen her own mates get chopped to bits by gunfire and personally verified the dead bodies of the enemy she'd killed. Hell, she'd seen dead civilians before - that was always bad, but she'd never seen anything as fucking awful as this before.

Jackal did nothing. Didn't move, didn't speak. Didn't show a shred of emotion. Not with his eyes, not with his body. Maybe he was open-mouthed in horror like she was but how could she tell with that stupid bloody _fucking_ mask in the way?

Her hands were trembling, and she clenched her fists hard, drew in a shuddering breath to calm herself.

Then Jackal did the worst thing he could possibly have done at that moment - he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

She bit down the urge to snap at him.

_Cunt._

No. No, that wasn't fair. No way he could have known.

"Don't," she snapped, jerking her arm away from him, hating the sound of her own voice.

"Dice-"

"Shut up, man. Just shut the fuck up."

She inhaled again - bad idea - turned away from him as she retched and bile washed into her mouth. She gagged and spewed it into the dirt, coughing. A string of spit hung from chin, snapped, and left a dark spot on her dusty boot.

It would have been inaccurate to say she wanted to die right then. No good soldier truly wanted to die, and she was a good soldier. She was a Royal Marine Commando, for fuck's sake. And she wasn't the only one who felt like shit. Most of the other blokes in her platoon had kids. Some even had grandkids. Some of them were crying. Others just looked on in horror as she had done before her own nausea had crept up on her and taken her by surprise.

No, she didn't want to die. She just wanted to stop existing. She just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. She wanted, more than anything, to rewind time and for this never to have happened. She wanted to be back in England and for this fucking war never to have happened in the first place.

She wanted to cut the throat of the fucking murderer who'd done this and leave them to bleed out in the sand like a stuck pig.

Then another thought occurred to her.

"How...who did this?"

It took Jackal a couple of seconds to understand what the fuck she was talking about. First his brows knitted in bewilderment, then his eyes widened in realisation before he cast his gaze downward with a sigh. _Jesus_, she thought. _How can he even bring himself to look?_

"No way to know for sure without a ballistics report," he said flatly. "Could've been us, could've been the insurgents. It doesn't matter either way. There's nothing we can do for them now."

"We've got to do something. We can't just...leave them here."

Someone had fetched a rough blanket from inside one of the buildings - not large enough to conceal the awful spectacle completely or scrub away the images burned into Dice's retinas, but perhaps large enough to lend a shred of dignity to the victims. Dice felt that surely they deserved that smallest of gestures, but as soon as the Marine motioned to drape the blanket over the prone bodies Jackal's hand shot out with lightning speed to grab his wrist.

"Cancel that," he said quietly. "Best thing we can do is just to keep the hell away from them until EOD have made sured they're not wired and then give the coordinates to the ANP once we've cleared this place."

Dice couldn't bring herself to hate how infuriatingly calm and utterly dispassionate he was being about the whole situation. She couldn't even bring herself to make an indignant protest about how the Afghan police could be trusted about as far as they could be thrown. She couldn't bring herself to feel anything except a kind of numbness, a heaviness in her shoulders that tied her guts in knots and made the rifle in her arms weigh a ton.

She wasn't even making an effort not to cry any more. She didn't need to, because as much as she felt like she was going to at any second she knew full-well she wouldn't have been able to even if she'd tried. Some people cried as a coping mechanism, but not her. She just couldn't bring herself to do it, not even after this.

She'd not cried in such a long time. She'd not _wanted_ to cry in such a long time. Not since-

"Sergeant!"

God, she felt pathetic. She felt so fucking weak and stupid just for feeling guilty about this when there was nothing to say it was even her fault, but at the same time she was disgusted for not wanting to feel responsible. Part of her still felt like she wasn't cut out for the Royal Marines even now, and that she was just a scared little girl pretending at being a soldier.

_I want to go home, that part of her whined._

"What is it?" she heard Jackal say, his voice muffled and echoey as though her ears were stuffed full of cotton wool.

_You can't go home. Not yet._

"You'd, uh...you'd better come see for yourself."

_There's still work to be done._


End file.
